au-pairs. don't come easy. to me.

As many of you know, our second au-pair, Susi left us on Monday to selfishly trek around the country - how could she!!??!

Our family experiences an interesting transition whenever it's time for an au-pair to leave. It's almost like losing a member of the family. There's sadness as we miss having Susi around; adjustment to the lack of help (I stayed up until 2am two nights this week to manage my workload with making meals, laundry and housework as Hugo engrosses most of my time), but there's also a new sense of family, which we are really enjoying.

I love spending all of this extra time with our little Hugo. He's much happier and absolutely adores spending days with Andrew and Mum as they've been helping us. Kristian definitely feels more at home and we've re-gain a sense of our little family unit, just the three of us.

Nevertheless, it's not practical for me try and effectively manage everything on my own, so we're in search of another au-pair. It's such a bad time of the year as there aren't many people coming out for winter. We're in competition with at least three other families for every au-pair that arrives and because each person not only works for you, but also lives with you and looks after the most precious thing in the world, we can't just go with anyone.

We've seen one au-pair in the past two weeks and find out tomorrow whether she also likes us (as we thought she would be good) .... So wish us luck!